Philosopher and scientist, born in Champtercier, SE France. Ordained priest (1616), he became professor of philosophy at Aix (1617) and professor of mathematics at the Collège Royal in Paris (1645). Kepler and Galileo were among his friends. He was a strong advocate of the experimental approach to science, and tried to reconcile an atomic theory of matter (based on the Epicurean model) with Christian doctrine. He is best known for his Objections (1642) to Descartes' Meditations, but he also wrote on others, including Copernicus. His works include Institutio astronomica (1647) and the Syntagma philosophicum (Philosophical Treatise), published posthumously in 1658.
Pierre Gassendi (January 22, 1592 – October 24, 1655) was a French philosopher, scientist and mathematician, best known for attempting to reconcile Epicurean atomism with Christianity and for publishing the first official observations of the Transit of Mercury in 1631. The Moon's Gassendi crater is named after him.
Biography
Early Life
Pierre was born at Champtercier, near Digne, in France. Four years later he received the degree of Doctor of Theology at Avignon, and in 1617 he took holy orders. In the same year he answered a call to the chair of philosophy at Aix-en-Provence University, and seems gradually to have withdrawn from theology.
He lectured principally on the Aristotelian philosophy, conforming as far as possible to the orthodox methods. He contributed to the objections of Aristotelian philosophy, but waited to publish his thoughts.
Priesthood
In 1624, after he left Aix for a canonry at Grenoble, he printed the first part of his Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos. A fragment of the second book later appeared in print at La Haye (1659), but Gassendi never composed the remaining five, apparently thinking that the Discussiones Peripateticae of Francesco Patrizzi left little scope for his labours.
After 1628 Pierre Gassendi travelled in Flanders and in Holland. During this time he wrote, at the instance of Marin Mersenne, his examination of the mystical philosophy of Robert Fludd (Epistolica Exercitatio, in qua precipua principia philosophiae Roberti Fluddi deteguntur, 1631), an essay on parhelia (Epistola de parheliis), and some valuable observations on the transit of Mercury which Kepler had foretold. He returned to France in 1631, and two years later became provost of the cathedral church at Digne.
Astronomical Observations
In 1631, Gassendi became the first person to observe the transit of a planet across the Sun, viewing the transit of Mercury which Kepler had predicted. In December of the same year he watched for the transit of Venus, but this event occurred when it was night time in Paris.
Controversy
Gassendi then spent some years travelling through Provence with the duke of Angoulême, governor of the region. they appear as the fifth in the series contained in the works of Descartes. Gassendi's tendency towards the empirical school of speculation appears more pronounced here than in any of his other writings.
Mathematics chairmanship
In 1645 he accepted the chair of mathematics in the Collège Royal in Paris, and lectured for several years with great success. In addition to controversial writings on physical questions, there appeared during this period the first of the works for which historians of philosophy remember him. Two years later appeared his commentary on the tenth book of Diogenes Laërtius, De vita, moribus, et placitis Epicuri, seu Animadversiones in X. In the same year he had published the more important Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri (Lyons, 1649;
In 1648 ill-hkf;sdalksa'fealth compelled him to give up his lectures at the Collège Royal. He travelled in the south of France -in company of his protégé, aid and secretary François Bernier- spending nearly two years at Toulon, the climate of which suited him. In 1653 he returned to Paris and resumed his literary work, publishing in that year lives of Copernicus and of Tycho Brahe.
Death and Memorials
The disease from which he suffered, a lung complaint, had, however, established a firm hold on him.
Writings
Montmort published Gassendi's collected works, most importantly the Syntagma philosophicum (Opera, i.
N. the third contains his critical writings on Epicurus, Aristotle, Descartes, Fludd and Lord Herbert, with some occasional pieces on certain problems of physics; the fifth, his commentary on the tenth book of Diogenes Laërtius, the biographies of Epicurus, NCF de Peiresc, Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Georg von Peuerbach, and Regiomontanus, with some tracts on the value of ancient money, on the Roman calendar, and on the theory of music, with an appended large and prolix piece entitled Notitia ecclesiae Diniensis;
Gassendi became one of the first to treat the literature of philosophy in a lively way. His writings abound in those anecdotal details, natural yet not obvious reflections, and vivacious turns of thought, which made Edward Gibbon style him, with some extravagance certainly, but also with some truth -- "Le meilleur philosophe des littérateurs, et le meilleur littérateur des philosophes".
Gassendi holds an honourable place in the history of physical science.
Reviews of his writing
To in the history of philosophy remains more doubtful. but, as occurs with so many of the anti-Aristotelian works of this period, the objections show the usual ignorance of Aristotle's own writings. The second book, which contains the review of Aristotle's dialectic or logic, throughout reflects Ramism in tone and method. The objections to Descartes -- one of which at least, through Descartes's statement of it in the appendix of objections in the Meditations has become famous -- have no speculative value, and in general stem from the crudest empiricism. For while he maintains constantly his favourite maxim "that there is nothing in the intellect which has not been in the senses" (nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu), while he contends that the imaginative faculty (phantasia) is the counterpart of sense -- that, as it has to do with material images, it is itself, like sense, material, and essentially the same both in men and brutes;
The Syntagma philosophicum, in fact, remains one of those eclectic systems which unite, or rather place in juxtaposition, irreconcilable dogmas from various schools of thought. It sub-divides, according to the usual fashion of the Epicureans, into logic (which, with Gassendi as with Epicurus, is truly canonic), physics and ethics. The logic, which contains at least one praiseworthy portion, a sketch of the history of the science, is divided into theory of right apprehension (bene imaginari), theory of right judgment (bene proponere), theory of right inference (bene colligere), theory of right method (bene ordinare). The first part contains the specially empirical positions which Gassendi afterwards neglects or leaves out of account. phantasy (which Gassendi takes as material in nature) reproduces these ideas; In his dispute with Descartes he did apparently hold that the evidence of the senses remains the only convincing evidence;
In the second part of the Syntagma, the physics, appears the most glaring contradiction between Gassendi's fundamental principles. While approving of the Epicurean physics, he rejects the Epicurean negation of God and particular providence. 233), that all this portion of Gassendi's system contains nothing of his own opinions, but is introduced solely from motives of self-defence.
In the third part, the ethics, over and above the discussion on freedom, which on the whole is indefinite, there is little beyond a milder statement of the Epicurean moral code. Probably, Gassendi thinks, perfect happiness is not attainable in this life, but it may be in the life to come.
The Syntagma remains thus an essentially unsystematic work, and clearly exhibits the main characteristics of Gassendi's genius.
User Comments Add a comment…